


Air and Gasoline

by firstbornking



Series: Copper and Platinum [5]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: First Time Blow Jobs, Grooming, Incest, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27075301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbornking/pseuds/firstbornking
Summary: de·vour1. to eat up hungrily, greedily, or ravenously.2. (of a fire or similar force) to consume destructively, recklessly, or wantonly.In which Rick and Morty ignore a funeral, Rick follows through on a promise, and Morty learns a thing or two about lip service.
Relationships: Rick Sanchez/Morty Smith
Series: Copper and Platinum [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706875
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73





	Air and Gasoline

Frank Palicky had been a popular young man. 

Morty retrieved his Holt McDougal Literature textbook from his locker, trying not to read the construction paper hearts and Hallmark sympathy cards plastered from floor to ceiling two doors down. 

_‘- we’ll miss you forever, man -’_

_‘- I can’t believe you’re really gone -’_

_‘- my life is never going to be the same without you, Frank -’_

Morty walked briskly down the hallway, ignoring the grief counselling pamphlets and flyers announcing the upcoming memorialization ceremony next Friday afternoon. He hoisted his backpack higher on his shoulders, holding the slack webbing straps tightly as he tried not to break into a sprint. He just needed to get out of the double doors and into the dropoff pickup zone, and he wasn’t thinking any further ahead than that. He’d learned by now that sometimes, it was all he could do to take his life one minute at a time. 

This was one of those times.

He depressed the crash bar on the exit door, and shielded his eyes from the intense late afternoon light beating into the smooth asphalt. It was a sweltering day in mid June, three days from the start of summer vacation, and Morty blinked against the inferior mirages of shimmering air dancing across the parking lot, looking for the familiar shape of his ride home. He caught sight of it by the landscaped buffer along the back of the lot, and he beelined for it with his head ducked low. 

He didn’t look at Rick as he opened the ship’s passenger door and threw his backpack into the backseat. He fastened his seatbelt, folded his hands in his lap, and looked out the window at the young perimeter trees shading the parking spaces and separating the lot from the sidewalk. 

“Where’s Summer, Morty?”

Morty didn’t turn his head. “She’s helping organize the, um, the memorial service, Rick. She’s gonna get - she's getting a ride home with Tricia.” 

Rick started the ship and fired up the thrusters. Morty didn’t ask to put on the radio, and they flew home in uneventful silence.

When Rick killed the engine in the garage, he waited a minute before he said, with at least the good grace to pitch his tone steady instead of censorious, “I told you it was just a stay of execution, Morty.”

“Rick, _please_ ,” Morty said, demoralized down to the very center of his being. “Have you heard me complain?”

Rick gripped the steering wheel so tight Morty heard its leather cover creak. “The silent treatment _is_ complaining, Morty.”

Morty finally looked at his grandfather, exasperated. “W-w-would you rather I cry so you get to - so you can comfort me after something you did to upset me in the first place, Rick?”

Rick’s brow lowered into a sharp line of annoyance, and he snapped, “I saved you, you ungrateful fucking brat. Crying on me wouldn’t be much of a thank you, but it’d be better than this bullshit, Morty.”

Morty sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he said, “I’m sorry, Rick. I-I didn’t realize me keeping my stupid little mouth shut would bother you so much.”

Rick clenched his jaw. He carefully removed his hands from the steering wheel to rest his elbows on the center console and door armrest, and asked tightly, “D’you - are you _trying_ to get me to smack you, Morty?” 

“W-what? I - no!” Morty backtracked quickly, eyes going wide and irritation giving way to well worn appeasement behavior at the mere implication of violence. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, voice going soft as yielding air as he whispered out, “I just - how am I - I don’t know h-how you want me to respond, Rick. W-w-what do you want me to say?”

“Jeez, I dunno, you could m-maybe start with thank you, Morty,” Rick said, staring out the windshield at his cluttered horseshoe workbench. His tone was shopworn, frayed in a way Morty wasn't used to hearing. It was almost as if he were upset by his grandson's lack of gratitude, but it was far more likely that he was just offended that he wasn't being showered with the tearstained praise he was sure he deserved. 

Morty set a hand over his on the center console, and leaned forward to catch his eyes before he said, in a genuine little voice designed to appease, "Thank you, grandpa Rick."

Rick sideyed him, and Morty knew he’d started something there was no backing out of. His grandfather’s eyes were dark with interest, his hand twisting to grab hold of his own and draw it up to his mouth. He pressed Morty's fingers to his lips as he said, “That’s - that’s nice, sweetie, but d’you know what’d be better?”

Morty blushed, already having a good clue where this was going, but he allowed Rick to pull him closer without resistance and played along obediently, whispering out, “No, grandpa Rick. Wh-what would be better?”

Rick smirked down at him, and said through tender kisses at his grandson's fingertips, “If you showed me exactly how grateful you are, baby. You - y’know what they say…”

Morty's flush worked its way down his chest as he finished the saying in his head. 

_‘Actions speak louder than words.’_

…

The resort on Sumareena was an underwater affair, accessed via either a minaret elevator or recreational submarines docked by a bustling quayside. The area was surrounded by sweeping, carved bone arches studded through with embouchure holes that whistled tunefully whenever the wind blew. Morty swiveled his head to stare up at them when they first sounded off, a high-pitched, flutelike cantabile singing through the commercial waterways that made up the city’s thoroughfares.

“What’s that, Rick?” he asked, stepping through the portal onto the pontoon wharf attached to the hotel’s entrance lobby. 

Rick looked up at the arches, digging a pinky in his ear with a dull grimace. “Superstitious bullshit, Morty.”

Morty tilted his head. Rick strode off the swaying wharf, and he trotted along after him, pressing curiously over the chiming music, “Wh-what’s the superstition?”

“Something a-about keeping a seademon asleep or warding off tsunamis or some other dumb shit like that,” Rick answered, bored and disdainful. “It’s just - it’s magical thinking, Morty. Ideas too stupid even for organized religion to take seriously. Don’t - don’t think about it.” 

Morty thought about it. The melody ringing in his ears was pretty and pleasant, and the arches looked like they must have taken ages to build. As far as superstitions went, it was quite a charming one. 

“Is there a seademon, Rick?”

Rick held the door to the lobby open, ushering him inside impatiently. “If there is, this god awful music is doing a great job of keeping it far the fuck away from here.”

Morty stepped through the doorway; the second he got within reach, Rick slung an arm around his shoulders and tugged him in close against his side. Morty automatically grabbed the edge of his lab coat, and said with a little shrug, “I-I-I like it alright. Why d’you dislike it so much? Did you - did a flautist kick your ass in high school or something?”

Rick ignored him as he negotiated the price of a room with the concierge, a bizarre cross between a seahorse and a frill shark, and got the keys for a submarine. He walked briskly back out the lobby, so fast Morty had to stumble along to keep up, and opened the hull of an underwater vessel moored to the pontoon with a beeper attached to the keys he’d just procured. He picked Morty up under the armpits and deposited him in the passenger seat as if he were a piece of carry on cargo, a treatment Morty was more than familiar with at this point and relaxed into to avoid unnecessary injury, and jumped into the pilot’s seat beside him with a quiet grunt. 

As Rick was checking the barometric pressure gauge, he answered austerely, “No, Morty. Band geeks wouldn’t come within fifty feet of me in high school. Superstitions just - they’re fucking poison to the rational mind, Morty. Nothing’s set mankind back further than unfounded explanations that make morons believe shit that’s harmless at best, and a fucking disaster for scientific progress at worst.” 

Morty reached for a seatbelt that wasn’t there, and looked up to see a hanging grab handle like those mounted on the ceilings of buses and subway cars. He looped a hand through it and held on as Rick began submerging their rented personal submarine under the dark blue water, unspooling the towed array cables as they descended.

Morty thought about bygone summer afternoons spent hunting for four leaf clovers with his dad, and a pang of sadness echoed inside the chambers of his heart. He didn’t want to argue with his grandfather, but he couldn’t help gently disagreeing, “That’s - that’s pretty harsh, Rick. I think - I mean, th-they’re not all bad. If something makes someone feel better, l-like lucky or less uncertain, then what’s so wrong with that?”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Of course _you’d_ think that way, Morty.”

Morty rolled his eyes right back. “What, with compassion and decency?”

“Decency?” Rick sideyed him with a dirty smirk, and Morty diminished against the padded handrail with a small, shamed nod. Rick chuckled. 

“And here I thought - here I was sure I’d fucked all that outta you by now, baby.”

Morty flushed, looking out the panoramic windshield. They were surrounded on all sides by a thick, inky blackness, the watercraft’s headlights illuminating scant feet in front of them and revealing nothing as they slowly descended deeper into darkness. He thought of painting horseshoes, and throwing salt over his shoulder, and blowing out birthday candles with one wish in mind, and a nameless ache carved itself on the inside of his ribcage. 

_“See a penny, pick it up, and all that day, you’ll have good luck.”_

He blinked back tears as they approached the seafloor, willing the memory back in the little lockbox he kept closed in his grandfather's presence. Gradually, a structure appeared before them, consisting of long, metal cylinders branching off of a main barrel shaped building. It was fantastically underlit by rock lights and high-intensity discharge lamps inlaid along its base, so bright compared to the dark trip down that Morty’s eyes needed a minute to adjust.

When they did, his stomach flipped at the construction of the hotel rooms, and he asked nervously, “I-is there any way to cover those windows?”

Rick hummed breezily, steering the submarine to a docking station beneath one of the rooms. As a hermetic seal was formed between their vessel’s hatch and the entrance to the hotel room, Rick said, “Sweetheart, people don’t pay top dollar f-f-for a resort like this just to pull curtains on the view.”

There was a loud suctioning noise, and the hatch slid open above them.

The first thing Morty noticed was the smell, like fresh linen and frankincense. He inhaled deeply, clambering out of his seat after Rick. The scent reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place, but it subsumed him with a sense of quiet, confused melancholy.

Rick shrugged off his lab coat and tossed it over a blue cushioned bench seat running the length of the room, and Morty was struck with the realization that this was the nicest hotel his grandfather had taken him to by a mile. From the outside, the lack of privacy offered by the scenic radius windows had filled Morty with dread, but from the inside, Morty could only stare in open-mouthed wonder at the stunning vision of the harlequin barrier reef they provided. 

As Morty looked, and the water settled after the disturbance caused by their arrival, marine life began to return to business as usual. Fantastic fish swam out from behind arborescent corals, great, gleaming, glittering creatures with saucer-like eyes and gaping maws. The reef, which had been dark during their descent, began to sparkle to life, sea worms scintillating like stars in the night sky amidst the polychromatic corals. 

“Oh, gosh,” Morty said, kneeling on one of the benches to rest a hand against the arched bay window. “It’s - it’s - w-wow, Rick.”

Rick came to stand behind him, wrapping lanky arms around his middle, and Morty tilted his head to the side to allow him room to kiss at his neck. Light laughter upset the fine hairs at his nape, and he shivered.

“That’s what you said last time, too.”

Morty blinked, and frowned. “Last time?”

Rick tugged him closer, working at the button on his jeans, and Morty stiffened as confusion slithered over his skin. He turned around, trying to look up at his grandfather’s face, but Rick’s expression gave nothing away.

“Wh-what d’you mean? Have I - have we been here before?”

Rick gave him a soft look, and Morty’s stomach sank into the shifting ocean sands beneath them. He closed his eyes as Rick sealed their mouths together, hatefully gentle, hideously sweet, and suddenly, nothing about the view struck him as beautiful anymore. 

He breathed in the scent of the hotel over his grandfather’s musk, trying to spur some recollection, but there was nothing but the vague impression of familiarity. He braced his hands on broad shoulders, furrowing his brow and trying to think, but Rick only unzipped his jeans and lifted him from the bench to carry him over to the bed in the center of the room.

“Wait - wait a minute, Rick,” Morty mumbled through their kiss, blood red flames licking at his cheeks as Rick laid him down and started pulling his cross trainers off, “Rick, y-you can’t just - s-say something like that, and - and - wait, please -”

Rick rumbled distractedly, half-listening to his grandson’s fussing but mostly focused on undressing him as quickly as possible. “Don’t worry about it, Morty. It’ll - I’ll make sure it goes - it’ll be better this time, I promise, baby.” 

Morty’s shoes thudded softly on the plush carpet, and Rick kissed along his collarbone as he slid his pants down to follow them, and Morty stared out at the fathomless ocean sky above them, _‘this time’_ echoing mesmeric in his mind.

What had happened last time?

“Wait, Rick,” he whispered, so quiet he could hardly hear himself, pushing without force against his grandfather’s chest, repeating dim and dazed, “Wait, just wait - pl-please wait, Rick...”

Rick didn’t listen. He stripped him naked and spread him out over the cashmere comforter, ignoring his whining and pleading. Morty knew Rick heard him, but at best his protests were but meaningless palaver, pointless prate and pratter, subdued little sounds signifying less than nothing.

Rick breathed out hot and damp down the line of his sternum, eclipsing his waist with his hands, and Morty watched a sunfish drift distantly overhead. It was tipped on its side, round as its namesake and shining brilliantly in the dark. It cast a spotlight over their bodies, so bright Morty had to squint, hands retreating into half-fists near his temples. Rick leaned back, and stared down at him, and said, “I know you don’t remember, sweetheart, but I’ve already been waiting a long time for this.”

Morty laid still beneath him, focusing on the way the light formed a halo around his wild hair instead of his shadowed expression, and whispered out, “What… what don’t I remember, grandpa Rick?”

“Oh, Morty,” Rick laughed lightly, equal parts tender and cruel, saying with a shake of his head, “It doesn't - it didn’t count, okay? I took it back for you.”

Morty foraged about his mind, looking for a gap, a dip, a valley that hinted at something having been taken away, but there was nothing but seamless, uninterrupted memories of school days cut short and adventures gone wrong and lies slipping easier and easier off his tongue as the weeks turned into months turned into years. He didn’t disbelieve his grandfather. To question how he was able to tamper with his memories didn’t occur to him for a second. 

He just asked, “Why, Rick?”

Rick lipped down his chest, settling more comfortably between his legs, and said without a trace of deceit, “Because you begged me to, baby.”

Morty watched the sunfish glide distantly overhead, a marvel of coruscant scales and luminous fins, and numbness crept in along the edges of his consciousness. Rick took hold of his cock, stroking firm and sure and deft, petting lovingly along the curve of his hip, and Morty curled his toes into the comforter, arching up into his hand with no input from reason or rationality. 

“Is that the - _ahh_ \- the only thing y-you took away, Rick?” 

Rick bent his grandson's leg at the knee, kissing at the shifting ligaments, up the subtle rise of flexing flesh. His pace was thoughtful and unhurried as he coaxed Morty to hardness, savoring the salt of his skin, breathing in his broken trembling and helpless confusion. "'Course not, sweetie. There's a lot of things you're better off not remembering."

Morty thought of the things he did remember. Giving his grandfather a picture of the two of them last Christmas, the tender, grateful, desperate look in his eyes as he told him he was so fucking sorry that he couldn't leave him alone that night; Rick getting wasted at his fourteenth birthday party, licking frosting from his fingers while their family stood feet away with their backs turned; the second Fourth of July they’d spent together, Rick fucking him in the ship while they watched the fireworks display over Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. He remembered Rick calling him a cute little cocktease, coming inside him with a sharp groan, clawing at his sides as willows and peonies and brocades of time rain ignited and slowly faded all around them.

Those were all memories Rick had allowed him to keep. Every languid kiss on the rooftop, every sideways glance across the dinner table, every untoward touch bathed in the blue light cast by the living room television; Rick had made the decision to let him hold onto all of those. 

The strangest thing was that even while it made perfect sense, to the point his shock only rippled over the surface of his being instead of shaking him to his core, he found it difficult to muster any anger, because he couldn’t for the life of him notice anything missing. There were no hazy days, no uneven stitches, no disjointed connections that stood out awkward or inexplicable. 

Everything fit. From the day Rick had stepped into his life and told him to get used to calling him grandpa, to the night Rick had first kissed him in the ship until he nearly fell asleep in his lap, to this moment without time or place, his grandfather caressing the pale ranges of his inner thighs, cosseting the delicate angles of his pelvis, fondling his cock like there was no other pleasant diversion in all the universes that could possibly relax him more.

He gasped, legs falling apart of their own accord, and Rick smirked, murmuring fondly, “Such a selfish little thing. You don’t complain half as much when you're the only one feeling good, baby.”

Morty tried to frown, but only ended up throwing his head back and moaning when Rick laved his tongue up the underside of his semi-hard cock. "Can you - _oh, ahn_ \- can you even get off without m-making me come first, grandpa Rick?"

Rick gazed at him through the tops of his eyes, expression warm as sunbaked shallows with none of the transparency. He gripped his grandson’s splayed thighs, long fingers enclosing them with an inch to spare, and said with purposeful depth, “I don’t prefer it, but that’s - I’m afraid that's what this weekend is all about, sweetheart.”

With that, he wrapped his mouth around Morty’s cock, lips, tongue and throat all working in tandem to entice him into a full erection. Morty bowed his back, hands scrabbling for purchase in the slick, soft fabric beneath them, mouth opening so wide the overhead lights caught on the pearls of his teeth as he whined out, “Oh, god, Rick - oh, oh, _oh, my god_ , Rick - wait, slow down a - a little bit - w-wait, that’s too much, can't you please -”

Again, Rick didn’t wait. If anything, he went faster, swallowing down around Morty’s little cock, shoving his thighs up so high his knees touched the mattress on either side of his ribs, squeezing them so tight Morty stuttered in a surprised breath at the pressure bordering on pain blending with the pleasure singing through his abdomen. Morty kept mumbling out his fruitless refusals, and Rick kept ignoring them, glossing the flat of his tongue over his quickly hardening shaft, swirling the tip of it over his sensitive foreskin, hollowing his cheeks as he sucked and hummed and made deep, gratified sounds in response to his grandson’s bashful moans and breathless pleas for him to slow down.

Just as Morty was reaching the end of his well worn gainsaying script, muscles warming under his grandfather’s hands and water drawing up hot from the well dug under his stomach, muffled music spilled out into the room.

_“Everyday, seems a little longer, every way, love’s a little stronger; come what may, do you ever long for true love from me?”_

It was a sweet, boyish voice, backed with knee-slapping percussion and a throughline of tender bell piano. Rick let go of him and leaned back slowly, cocking his head as he looked down at the floor. 

_“Everyday, it's a-gettin' closer, goin' faster than a roller coaster; love like yours will surely come my way, a-hey, a-hey hey.”_

"Is that your ringtone, Morty?" he asked, thumbing the drool from his lower lip as he reached down to rifle through the pockets of the pants on the floor, snatching up his grandson's phone. It kept ringing in his hand, and Morty went pink across the bridge of his nose.

"I-I-I thought I turned off the defraculator, Rick."

Rick shot him a cool, amused look, swiping right to answer the call and putting it on speaker. 

"What is it, Jerry?"

Morty's eyes widened, and he snapped up for the cell; Rick only held him down with a forearm across his chest and held it out of reach, tossing him a nasty grin.

 _"Rick? Why are you - where's my son?"_ Jerry asked, equal parts irritated and concerned. Rick sneered, and Morty's chest started to close in on itself.

"He's right here with me. What's it to you?"

Morty flinched at Rick's cold tone, unused to hearing anything below burning from him. Jerry sighed, impotent sarcasm banking frayed civility as he said, _"Well, if it's_ okay _with you, I wanted to double check with him about some of our plans for the summer. He's not spending his entire vacation with you for a third time, Rick."_

Rick bared his teeth in a truly unpleasant snarl, and Morty brushed mollifying fingers up his forearm. Rick looked down at him, at the trembling hands lighting over the arm pinning him down, and his expression lost its violent edge. He lifted half his weight off his grandson and grumbled out his irritation.

"You're really twisting my arm here, Jerry - r-really putting me in a tough spot. I need Morty - I need him for things beyond your reasoning, _Jerry_."

Jerry huffed in annoyance. _"I'm sure you can spare him for two weeks, Rick. You're not the only grandparent who'd like to spend time with him, y'know."_

Rick glared murder at the headboard, but refuted nothing. Morty stroked his upper arms, peacekeeping and placatory, and Rick worked to unclench his jaw.

“He only wants to go for one week, Jerry. Two is really pushing it.”

Morty frowned, hands stilling. They'd all agreed on two weeks over a month ago, but Rick shot him a stonefaced look, and Morty didn't even hold out for a second before he went back to petting his arms. Rick relaxed into his touch, setting the phone down on his chest and kissing at his shoulder as Jerry gathered himself on the other end of the line.

_"Really now? Because the last time I talked to him about it, he seemed open to the idea of staying with my parents for an entire month. He told me he really missed them and couldn't wait to see his nana and papa again."_

Rick’s arms coiled under Morty’s back, so stiff and deliberate Morty could only assume that he felt threatened, and without thinking, he spoke up to break the building tension.

“Yeah, dad, I - I changed my mind. One week’s plenty of time, and they’re gonna - they’re coming down for Christmas again this year, right? So I’ll see them for a few days then?” 

_“Morty?”_ Jerry asked, tone pulling a complete one-eighty. _“Are you sure, son? If you’re worried about overstaying your welcome or anything, I promise you they don’t mind -”_

Rick exhaled through his teeth, and Morty fumbled to pick up the phone and cut his dad off. He held it close to his mouth, watching schools of flamingo pink fish swim by as Rick settled back into kissing down his chest and stomach.

“I’m sure, dad. It’s - it’s better to keep it short, a-a-and I really do have a lot of things I need to help Rick with, so,” he said, tripping over his own eagerness to put Rick at ease, but heartsick all the same at his father’s disappointed silence.

 _“Alright, son,”_ Jerry finally said, trying not to let the defeat show in his voice and failing, and Morty felt so sick to his stomach he could barely breathe. Rick kept an arm under his lower back, propping him up as he wrapped a hand around his waning erection to once again coax it to life. Morty shuddered hard, and started to stumble over a rushed goodbye.

“O-okay, dad, if - if that’s all, th-then I really need to go. I’ll -”

“What did you need to double check with him about?” Rick asked, an offhand reminder of the initial purpose of the call, and Morty looked down at him in dawning mortification, mouthing his name in silent shock. 

Rick smirked up at him before licking a wet stripe up his cock, and Morty bit his lip.

_“Oh… oh!”_ Jerry said, and Morty knew he'd completely forgotten what he was going to ask and would have hung up if Rick hadn't said anything. Morty tried to glare at his grandfather, but it was difficult to serve righteous indignation while being so well and intimately serviced. _“Yeah, your papa just wanted to know if you really did want to visit Fenway Park, son. He was going to get tickets for the game on Tuesday and wanted to make sure you still liked baseball.”_

Rick swallowed his cock down, palming his balls in one hand and stroking his thigh with the other, and Morty tossed his head to the side to muffle a moan into the pillow. 

_“Morty?”_

“Y-yeah, dad, th-that's -” he panted away from the receiver, attempting to catch his breath but only managing a needy whimper as Rick pursed his lips around the base of his cock and sucked hard. “Tell him I said that's f-fine, dad!”

_"Hey, there's no need to shout, now. Are you sure you're -"_

“I'm _fine_ , dad!”

As soon as his father's silence hit his ears, he regretted snapping. The hum and reverb of Rick's chuckle around his cock sent a pulse of heat up his spine even as he wallowed in guilt and self hatred.

_“... if you say so, son.”_

Morty pinched his eyes shut. No matter the trouble it would cause, no matter the hell it would put him through, he couldn't end the call on that note. 

He remembered his father’s body, laying limp and lifeless in the driver's seat of the station wagon all those years ago, and tears soaked into the pillow as he said his soft goodbye.

“I can't wait to spend a week with you and nana and papa. I love you, dad.”

A smile returned to his father's voice, a reassurance Morty could clearly hear when he said back, _“I love you, too, son.”_

Morty hung up, and let the phone drop from his hand back to the floor. He didn’t look at his grandfather when he released his cock with a wet _pop_ , sitting up between his legs and wiping his mouth clean of drool with a cursory swipe of his thumb. He didn’t have to open his eyes to see Rick’s expression; the green-eyed monster that mocked the meat it fed upon, the seething embers that stole the sun and demanded it stop burning so brightly.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Morty,” he said, a gently simmering dusk to his tone, hands deceptively weightless over his grandson’s thighs. “Are you trying to get me to hit you?” 

Morty flinched back into the mattress, digging his fingers into the down blanket beneath them. He shook his head, refusal fierce and frightened, voice falling to pieces as he said, “ _No_ \- I - of course n-not, grandpa Rick.”

Rick pet along his hip, up his shivery side, catching jagged, nicotine yellow nails on the jutting bones of his heaving ribs, and said, “I thought w-we were trying to make up with this here little getaway, baby. I thought you wanted to apologize for making your old man feel so -” he brushed his fingertips over his grandson’s nipple, “- fucking -” he gave the tender flesh a quick twist and finished over Morty’s sharp squeal, “- _unappreciated_.” 

_“Rick!”_ Morty screamed, snapping his eyes open to look up at his grandfather in shock. He tried to squirm up the bed, kicking his feet in a bid to put some distance between them, but Rick only pinned him down by his shoulders and sneered down at him.

“I don’t ask you for much, Morty,” he said, so calm and level Morty had to wonder if he actually believed himself. “I’m patient. I’m considerate. I’m gentle with you, aren’t I?”

Morty stared up at him, horror reaching new heights at the hard, unkind glint in his eyes. Even as his grandfather’s fingers dug into his collarbone, he nodded, and Rick cupped his cheek, tone cool and matter-of-fact as he said, “You know I don’t have to be, right, Morty?”

The color drained from Morty’s face. His heart thudded in his ears, a thunderous commotion of blood and terror. He swallowed hard, and nodded again. 

Rick tsk’ed at him, a sickeningly parental sound full of disappointment which Morty had come to associate with strict discipline. He went still, breath floating off the top of his lungs in shallow pants. With a sigh, Rick pulled him up into his lap, and said, “I’m gentle with you because I want to be, baby. If you - I - I’m starting to think you’re taking that for granted, y’know? Maybe if you - if you just put me first for once, you’ll be a little more thankful every time I do the same for you.”

Morty stared out the window, watching a shark weave its way alongside the glass. The school of fish scattered at its approach, scales shimmering in the incandescent light of the deep sea life as they fled. He sat doll-like in his grandfather’s arms, listening to him in silence.

“What d’you say, sweetie? Are you -” he brushed his fingertips over his grandson’s lips, eyes black with a deep, inexhaustible greed, “- are you ready to learn how to show me how grateful you are, sweetheart?”

Morty’s head sunk onto Rick’s shoulder, and he whispered out, “Y-yes, grandpa.”

“There’s my good boy,” Rick said, a welcome return to pleasure and praise, and the most heinous thing of all was that while he knew he had no choice but to say yes, Morty did feel grateful. 

Rick had been patient. Rick had been considerate. Rick was gentle.

His grandfather had waited years to teach him how to suck his cock, and for that, Morty felt nothing but blind, broken, beholden gratitude. 

**Author's Note:**

> The other half of my two stories for the Minibang Challenge! Stunning art by @seaweeeeedcat, anon and anonymous. Thank you all so much for your amazing work!
> 
> The song in this chapter is _Everyday_ by Buddy Holly. I apologize for the cliffhanger, but there is more to come, I promise. All in due time :) 
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed!


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